Loop
by NoFootprintsInSand
Summary: She spins and she spins and she spins again. Nausea and vertigo and bone sharp fragments of time wedged deep behind her eyes. Then she rips him away. AU. One-shot.


I own nothing. J.K. owns everything.

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_(she spins and she spins and she spins again. nausea and vertigo and bone sharp fragments of time wedged deep behind her eyes. then she rips him away)_

They weed. The garden is overgrown and full of colour, lush and heady. Many of the blooms are foreign to her, the birdsong desolate and strange, but she finds that for once she does not care much for details. They move about each other in long days of sunshine, in unspoken agreement to pick up fallen branches and clear the murky pond full of lily pads, pull thistles and tame hedges. "Though let's not be overzealous," he tells her. "This garden is better wild." She wears a flowery tea dress at least four sizes too big, she found it in the attic, and the clean green grass beneath her bare feet, between her toes, is almost too much.

_(she remembers her feet covered in blood and ashes but she banishes the memory. not here not now)_

The cottage is tumbledown and long abandoned, wood and flaking red paint and trim that used to be white. They make it as habitable as they are able, and in summer nights never quite kissed by darkness they lounge out on the half rotted porch. She can smell the lilac twining the woodwork and the wild herbs halfway down the path. Lemon balm and rosemary and sage. The midnight sun bathes his tired, worn face in golden light and makes him beautiful. She wants to touch him but no, she really ought not.

_(she had been desperate and deranged with grief and she had quite deliberately surrendered control and she does not know where or when they are. she likes it that way)_

He watches. She notices him forever keeping her in his peripheral vision, unendingly aware of her, pondering her. Sometimes when he is close she catches him softly inhaling the air around her wild hair. She had worked quite the convoluted charm on his memory but she is starting to suspect that despair warped her aim. There are brief moments where she wonders if he does indeed know exactly who she is, but if so he keeps it to himself and patiently awaits an explanation other than the vague, false one she already gave him.

She does her best to keep him distracted from unspoken questions.

_(friends and lovers lost to them both – so many so many oh god the _blood_ – and he is one of the kindest men she has ever known and if only one of them deserves a jagged shard of oblivion it is him)_

They have been here for some time - she has lost count of the days - and they have yet to see another person. The garden is clear of weeds now and warm and alive with late summer. He is so gratified with their progress and he wants to start work on the cottage, but she gently resists his suggestions. The garden already was a folly, but one she was willing to indulge in with him. Restoring the cottage would hurt her too much. "Let's enjoy the garden first," she says to him. "We can fix the cottage later."

They pick sweet berries, amber like his eyes in moonlight, from the marshes round the lake and wander the deer trails and swat at mosquitoes that somehow never seem to bite him, only her. She tells him that she is sure she heard wolves howling last night. He smiles that wry, askew smile that makes her want to laugh and weep at the same time and answers that he seriously doubt wolves would come near, not with him here. Of course. She ponders how long she can maintain them without causing irreversible damage, then watches him gracefully lope across a small creek and she forgets. For a while.

_(a handful of peace clutched tightly in a white knuckled fist. just a handful. for him. for a short while. just a short while. please)_

The month is turning. She senses nervous energy tightening around him, almost moving his hair with static electricity. He is all hectic movements and quick eyes and smiles that are nearly snarls. He paces and his pupils are blown and when she makes to pass him on her way to the wood stove in the old kitchen he grabs her around her waist. He pulls her to him - impossible heat and barely restrained violence - and she does not resist.

He takes her on the rough, dusty wood floor and she welcomes the splinters in her back. The soft dry sound of the leaves that must have blown through the broken window last autumn. Sighs. Wet kisses and bared skin. Limbs tangling, bones melding and hearts breaking. Fingerprints. "Mine," he growls into the soft skin on her stomach. "Yours," she agrees as she offers him her neck, even though she knows it is not true.

_(let him have this. let me have this)_

When he brings her to shuddering completion she sobs around her ecstasy and desperately wills him not to notice. He is too intent on disappearing into the woods anyway, her dress still held in tatters in his hand.

A day and a night and half a day later he re-emerges from the pines, feet and legs covered in mud, blood under his fingernails. His face is ragged and torn, exhaustion writ into every line, but despite leaden limbs he gathers her up and lies her down with him on his (_theirs_. It is _theirs_ now and she cannot stand it but she cannot possibly have it any other way) makeshift cot. He holds her gently against him, whispers hoarse affection into her curls. She strokes his temples until he falls asleep. Afterwards she sits out on the porch and listens to a water bird from the lake behind the trees. It is the most forsaken song she has ever heard. She thinks it might be a loon.

_("You cannot change anything, not without terrible repercussions and temporal anomalies too great for life as we know it. You must wield it wisely." and she has. she _is._ this is temporary it will not change anything she is not irresponsible she is not she is _not_)_

They can spend entire days out on the grass in the garden. They lie beneath foxglove and monkshood and she uses fingertips to read the map of him in silver scars. Cartography. She traverses the landscape of him, travels across his arms and back and buttocks. She mouths the jagged lines on his chest. And his face… she ghosts her breath over new and old marks. She murmurs love into scar tissue, too quietly even for his keen ears. She reads him, yes, but she always stops before she reaches the end. She is careful not to let him see her tears as she wraps her legs around him and takes him inside her again and again.

_(she cannot change anything no but she can hold him for a while)_

The air is turning sharp and keen, colours visceral in their intensity. They still lie wrapped in his threadbare robes out on the grass for as long as they are able each night, but it is really getting too cold. Constellations. She has a childish love of stars and she trails her fingers across the sky, draws him winged horses and dragons and great dogs. He hums into her shoulder and smiles and asks her questions about nebulae and dying stars. He is content, his face open and still. He is no longer asking why are they here, who is she, what is the purpose of this. He is at peace and she has succeeded and she has failed.

_(a gift. the only gift she has to give)_

Yet there are times…times when he thinks himself unobserved and there is a terrible look deep in his eyes, desolate and stark and she wonders... Then it is gone again and there is only his lopsided smile. She smiles back and presses her lips into the hollow just beneath his throat. Her favourite spot in the world as she know it.

_(a bubble in time. stasis)_

The first freezing winter night brings the smell of snow and sees the skies awash in brilliant emerald greens. The light is moving and swirling wildly far across the heavens but still close, it seems almost near enough for them to stretch their fingers out and touch. They watch it together and his face is a portrait of wonder. To her green recalls only atrocities and screams, and she moves closer to him, seeks his warmth even though it cannot possibly help. The garden lies fallow and it is time for them to leave. They have already stayed too long. She is only human, a weakening, cracking vessel attempting to contain more failures than she can count. She cannot loop time around her fingers any longer.

She turns in his arms and kisses him so hard it hurts, whispers an incantation into his mouth. Then they spin and they spin and they spin again. She fights the urge to vomit bile and shattered screams.

They appear just inside the tree line. Through smoke and fire and ash she can see the faint light of dawn to the east.

_("He was captured at dawn. Too many…and they had chains. He fought but he…he didn't stand a chance.")_

She feels no satisfaction that they have arrived exactly where they should, right where and when she first took his hand in hers and fled (_for a while. just a while_). She howls mutely as she stands as close to him as she can manage without crawling inside his clothes and his skin and his blood. She takes his hand in hers.

_(cannot ever change what has already come to pass cannot ever change what has already come to pass cannot ever ever ever)_

She pants with exertion but her words are crisp and clear. She knows them well, after all. She has spoken them once before, they are hers and she has to listen to herself speak them again even though they are shards of glass on her tongue and in her throat. Even though they are ripping and cutting and suffocating her with her own blood. Instructions. Plots. Plans.

Death.

_("It was a trap, all along it was a trap but we couldn't know! How could we have known! There was no choice and you mustn't blame yourself, you can't….")_

She watches him walk away from her, sure of step and as graceful in the hunt as only he can be. About twenty paces out he turns to face her. She sees awareness in his eyes, acute as a knife wound. She sees his lips beginning to form her name. Her real name. He knows. _He knows_. How long…has he known all along? No. _Please..._

He smiles at her. _He smiles_. He smiles at her even though he _knows_ and what he has done and what he is _doing _is the bravest and most selfless thing anyone has ever done for her. She had thought she could not break any more, that she is already ground into pieces too small to crush further, but oh, she _can_. She can.

She does not deserve his absolution.

_ ("…. when they realised he wouldn't talk, wouldn't yield, they poured molten silver down his throat.")_

He turns away from her again and disappears into the shadows without hesitation. She bends double and claws at her own face, creates wounds to match his. But she does not call him back to her. She cannot.

_("Afterwards they nailed him to the big oak. Remember, the one right outside the gates? He….he was half-turned. It…how…what must they have done to him to force that?")_

Another few turns, a few hours forward and she is back right where she first started, right where she left. Everything is back in place. Everything is aligned again and nothing is broken. Except for her. And him. And their cause, their world.

Pants and whispered voices and twigs breaking next to her. "Oh thank god, here you are," they say to her. "We thought we'd lost you for a minute." She turns to look at them – mostly strangers now because all her friends are dead (_they are dead they are gone and he was the last one)_ – and if abhorrence and stark horror is visible on her face they do not react. After all it is permanently etched into their own features and everywhere they look these days there are mirrors.

She watches the spectre of her past self on its knees among the trees behind them but refuses to let her face betray what she sees. "No," she tells them. "No, I've been here all along."

* * *

One day, one day I'll write a comedy.


End file.
